Blue
by Foodwise
Summary: Hm. I don't wanna give it away. It's short and sad. See for yourselves.


**Rizzoli & Isles, K, Angst, Jane Rizzoli/Maura Isles**

**Disclaimer: Rizzoli & Isles, its characters, places, and situations are the property of Ostar Productions, Warner Horizon Television and TNT. Credit for the original book series goes to Tess Gerritsen. This story was written for entertainment not monetary purposes. Original characters, and this story, are intellectual property of the author. Any similarities to existing characters, fictional or real, living or dead, are coincidental and no harm is intended.**

**Notes: A short piece that came to me late one night. ****Just reread it and thought I'd share it. Unbeta'd. Not a native speaker. One-shot. Don't put a story alert on this. Rather let me know what you think.**

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><p><strong>Blue<strong>

For the very first time in your life you wish you'd smoke. It'd fit your state of mind, suit your pose (legs spread a bit, elbows resting on your knees) on the park bench overlooking this particular part of the city, with the neck of your almost empty beer bottle held loosely between careless fingers. Numb fingers. It'd fit your emotions. You don't care anymore. Don't care what happens. Don't care what's healthy or not, what's good for you or not, who's good for you and who's not. You don't even care who still cares for you. Just watch the wads of smoke be carried away from your mouth by the evening breeze (if you smoked, which you really, really don't and never will, not even now), the cool, almost brisk gust that tells you like nothing else can that the last warm days of fall are coming to an end, that winter is just around the corner, that you probably should have donned a warmer sweater, that soon you'd need gloves again to protect your sensitive hands, your scars, from the freezing cold. You'd watch the smoke drift away, watch the ember reach the filter and then die slowly, just like the warmth, just like the season, just like your heart.

Your cell on mute vibrates in your pocket. You stopped counting the calls. Not hours ago, not just today, days ago now. You don't even check the caller ID anymore. You talk to no one unless work is considered. You just don't know what's left to say at all. You sure got no more words. None.

Joe Friday bounces towards you, her carefree enthusiasm about the prolonged stopover in the park, her joyous chase after a squirrel, her hyper barks and yelps trying to get you to focus on her a stark contrast to your broodiness, your obvious detachment from the world surrounding you, your blank stare ahead into the darkening sky, at the flashing up of streetlights and glowing of lamps through drawn curtains in houses and flats in your view (which you could watch if you actually looked at anything at all). Your small dog jumps onto the bench, where your feet rest since you sit on the backrest and your hand reaches out, an automatism, you're not even aware of the motion, to pet her head and scratch behind her fluffy little ears.

As the first stars appear above you and you steal the last, stale swig from your bottle, tilting your head back, you are mesmerised by the sight. You can't even remember when you'd last taken the time to simply stare into a dark, starry night sky ('count exactly as many as you are old, stop before you're tempted to find one more and then make a wish, it will come true' or so you played in make-believe when you were a teen). So long ago. You can't look away, you remember. And do just that. And you count to 34 and squeeze your eyes shut, wishing with all your might and inwardly despise yourself for being so childish. Foolish. So desperate.

You force your eyes to open up again, chase the whisper of a hope away, it's gratuitous, it's unreasonable, and as they hesitantly comply, you find your vision is hazy. Trying to focus, you blink, and blink again, and with each try everything goes even more blurry. The bottle finally slips out of your grasps and softly lands in damp grass when you feel moisture collect in the corner of your mouth. You dart your tongue out for a taste - bitter and salty. The devastating flavour of loss. Of defeat. Of high hopes and so many battles you stalled so long to fight rendered obsolete. The taste of loneliness.

The sob that wrenches its way out of your throat comes from so deep within you that you can't tell if it's your body throwing off the weight that had at long last gotten too heavy or if it's your very soul that finally cries out its pain. It resonates loudly in the quiet night, where no one can hear you and instantly you cringe, you feel so weak, so completely out of your depth that it breaks you all over again. Like this, you bear no resemblance to the person you made everyone, including yourself believe that you are. You're not weak. You are emotional, impulsive even, compassionate, devoted, loyal to a fault, but you are not weak. You're a survivor. A fighter. A woman who'd never let anyone or anything put her down. You don't just resign yourself to fate. You don't just give up. You never have and you swore to yourself you never would, whatever life would throw at you, however your strength would ever be put to the test. And yet here you sit, your body shaking, arms tightly slung around your midriff, rocking back and forth, tears streaming down your face, taking in ragged breaths. You are broken. She managed what no one ever had. What you would have never in a thousand years could have foreseen would, could ever happen to you. She left you naked, exposed to everything inside you that you had kept hidden for so long, she'd coaxed it all out of you, made you see, made you believe, made you stoke up the fire that had always smouldered inside of you, she set you free, set it all free until you embraced it with your whole being and relented, even longed for it to burn, to be rampant in its intensity, for her, for all that you saw in her, for all that she was to you.

She finally had been what had been missing, all this time, to make you whole.

But that was then.

Now, the air that fills your lungs is scentless. The blood that runs through your veins is cold. The ground beneath your feet just isn't solid anymore. You eat, and you taste nothing, you hear the people talk, but you hear nothing, you see the worry in their eyes, but you see nothing. You feel nothing. Just this. This unbearable pain of losing what you learned to treasure more than any worldly goods any human could ever possess. A love so all-encompassing that it had dared to drown you, bury, crush you with its sheer enormity, power, pull - before you just let go and allowed it to carry you away on its flow. Always a flow, there just was no ebb. Ever-growing, ever-changing, ever-improving, but the most substantial safety you've ever felt.

Before she pulled the rug from under feet and you fell, tumbled, crashed into this. This - nothingness. This void. This emptiness.

You want to be angry. Scream and punch and kick until you've exhausted yourself, you want to curse her and what she's done to you that you can end up like this, you want to hate her, but you know you never could. Not her. Not now, not ever.

You wipe the sleeve across your cheeks, rub your swollen eyes and stretch your long limbs before you glide off the bench. It's getting late. Tomorrow's just another day. Another case. Another tragedy. You've got to be rested, you've got to be alert. There are people depending on you, counting on you and your skills.

When you'll head down to the morgue, every step will be forced, sheer will-power or everything that's still left of it will take you there. You will have to rely on someone else but her. Because she's not there anymore to greet you with that small, caring, welcoming smile, that loving glance from behind goggled eyes. You will not slouch down in that horribly uncomfortable chair in her flawlessly, pristinely decorated, always tidied-up office. You will not hear the clicking of her heels against the hard floors, the rustling of her perfect dress when she enters the room, the dozens of ways she had for saying nothing more but just your name and all the different meanings her intonation could imply. You will not see the twinkle in her eyes when she starts to recite facts of this or that, not the look of love and longing in her eyes. You will not take her out for lunch or confidently reach for her hand to entwine your fingers, naturally, and lead her out of the building when the work for the day is done.

She's not there anymore.

She just up and left.

Left you.

You and the Department.

The Department and everyone else in Boston.

She just left.

Left you behind, on your own, with the knowledge what could have been, with the conviction that you, both, were right where you needed to be. With the surety that this had been it. Could have been it. Should have been it.

She just ran and you don't even know from what. She never even gave you the time to ask.

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><p>You stare into the mirror above your sink, drops running down the reflective surface where you just wiped your palm across the fogged up glass. You don't see yourself when you look into it. You see a shell. That just isn't you.<p>

You, the you you had been before she deconstructed you and put you back together again, with an imprint of herself branded so deep into your skin, your mind, your heart, your soul, that you would fight. But the you that just isn't complete, that isn't detached from feeling anymore can't pull up the strength. You can't pick up the pieces you've again shattered in to. All the fight has left you and the fist hitting the mirror can't even bring it to crack and it slips down, opening and then clenching the edge of the white ceramic, with strained knuckles of almost the same colour.

What did she take from you?

Why don't you fight anymore?

Why don't you search for her, confront her?

Because she asked you not to.

And if there was one thing you'd always done, it was honouring Dr. Maura Isles' implicit wishes.

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><p>You think of the stars and that foolish wish you'd made as you draw the curtains close and slide beneath the covers. Maybe it had been less of a wish and more of a prayer. That way you could live with it and not call it immature anymore. With more confidence, with the tiniest bit of restored hope as your foothold, you think again.<p>

If she doesn't realise what she's had, what you've had together, then she doesn't deserve you.

Now that felt better. You give yourself some credit. Because you deserve it.

If she realises what she's given up, she will reconsider.

You take a deep, cleansing breath. You're calm.

If you trust in everything she's ever said to you, about you, she won't stay away. If it was true, how could she stay away?

She couldn't, not forever.

You fall asleep and you trust, trust in her. You will trust in her until the day she would come knocking at your door.

Because she will.

She will.

She...


End file.
